bulldog1935

If you're going to Japan, bring home a Zonda https://noppin.com/yahoos/detail/l1117891174 My friend Jeff just bought his first ever Freespool reel - it's not this Ted Williams direct-drive combo (Shakespeare). He couldn't stray too far from the style, though. https://noppin.com/yahoos/detail/j1115215391

I would go with the new Stradic

@ghost - very nice reel collection, doing what a reel collection ought to do. The Ray's Studio SV spool is still really versatile, and lets you fish threadline braid with a wide lure weight range. Rather than giving up anything, look at this spool swap as adding new range and capability. When I began studying BFS for my salt winter niche, I went with 34 mm Daiwa because of the spool options out there, and especially, because the lighter fixed-inductor spools (Roro-X, AMO) take the last gram from the light-end capability. Matched with the right rod, this one will cast 2 g past 130'. The fixed-rotor spools do give up the ability to fish over 1/2 oz. BTW, Steez (with Roro-X) was the first Daiwa I bought since 1978. I didn't consider Daiwa after '85, when they wouldn't support parts on my Millionaire 6H, and went to Lew's. Jun Sonada's copy on JapanTackle talked me back into Daiwa, and the last I added was Silver Wolf - these 3 reels swap spools.

Looks like standard Shimano 4x7, with a half-nut (?) that removes the handle foot. Any Shimano 4x7 handle, or a Daiwa/Abu handle with a rectangular spacer will fit there. He'll also need a new Shimano 7-mm cap nut, and the retaining washer/screw that fits the cap nut should come with the handle. The handle will come with a keyed washer that fits on the shaft behind the handle. Showing this Tica, because it's also 4x7-mm Shimano-size shaft. 7-mm cap nut (they're all 10-mm hex-head). He can use an 8x5-mm Abu/Daiwa handle with a spacer like below, and some handles come with this for "universal" fit doesn't have to be a jigging handle, that's just the handy examples.

before we could make a recommendation, we would need to see the reel with the handle removed.

Hi @Chris at Tech, We fish the navigation channel in Arroyo Colorado (TX tropics) every winter. One side of the barge channel is lined with houses and docks/boat-lifts, with 4 miles of sodium spot lights pointing into the water. It draws winter bait - balls of glass minnows. The schoolie male speckled trout, which travel 20 mi/day to chase bait, sweep through the lights every night. The dock piers stack snook, and I've seen 40 on our piers, seen, hooked, and lost snook over 30". On this rod, I'll be fishing metal microjigs, 5 g, about 1" You look at the light on the water as a bowl, with bait "hiding" in the light, and gamefish ambushing from the dark. Fishing the light catches nursery seatrout that live here. Fishing the perimeter of the light bowl catches the schoolies, redfish, and snook. If no one is fishing the light on the adjacent dock, you cast past that light, and your retrieve maximizes snook attention along the dock piers. Susie with her 25" male schoolie spec, an 18" snook taken on a 3-g minnow plug, and the rod that casts that light lure past 130'. Even below-slot fish are a hoot on finesse tackle - this one was jumping off the table, and went back into the channel. Regards ps - my first slot snook, 6 years ago, 25" was on this XUL-rockfish/Cetus combo, 4-lb copolymer - a double with a spec on tandem jigs (20-lb leader). I since retired the little Cetus for braid on Shimano, and @Eric 26 now has the Cetus karma. This is also the most civilized fishing you've ever partaken. Stealth is important, so you sit together on the dock, smoke cigars, sip rum, and watch for fish sign. Somebody gets up and catches a fish, then sits back down. Everyone who wants gets a spec limit every night.

Fine braid won't Cast on spincast, it's too limp for the ejector pin to let it go. I rebuilt a friend's Abu 170 and lined it with 6-lb YoZuri hybrid - even that was too limp for the ejector pin to release the line. With the YZH, it was easy to solve by adding a casting algorithm - pressing and releasing the casting button while holding the line (the line is stiff enough for the pin to then release the line), then pressing the button again to grab the line with the rubber bumper, and cast. Proper ejector pin function is the reason Royal Bonnyl and Zebco monos are stiff and extra thick for their line test.

@VolFan - the way it doesn't end your day is having a back-up reel. My last backlash was Apr 2019, both casting into stiff wind and an invisible tip wrap with a 3/8-oz swim shad. Swapped in my back-up reel and fished a banner morning, including a 5-min stroll with a massive flounder, but never could get the hook set after a dozen tries. The best thing that morning, I put my friend Mark visiting from AZ on a hot tide pass, and he caught 20+ fish (the first 6 while I was re-rigging). Noteworthy, that was my last day fishing fluoro - I respooled that reel with braid, and have never fished anything else since.

one thing's for sure, if you have a line wrap on your rod tip, you need a whole lot more mag brake.

@TnRiver46 buying a '77 Ambassadeur is very different from buying a '77 (or '07) spinning reel. The former are built to fish into the next generation (and the next) - the latter are built to make it out of the store. This one did get a new A/R dog, and a better-condition used main shaft (because of boogered threads)

I think I'd file that one under "Do Not Buy This Reel"

Bushings are known to slow down a reel. Full-LW-BB reels such as Isuzu Kogyo synchro reels offer a swap-in spool bushing set just for that purpose. Going the other way, full-BB swap on Ambassadeur LW, (worm gear, idler gear), along with a lightweight spool swap, brings the normal lure-working range on these reels down from 3/8 oz to 3 g. In extreme load applications, bushings can wear badly, especially if thrust is added to the radial load. Antique fly reels with full-spool-width bushings often exhibit spool wobble from conical bushing wear.

There are a lot of good knob swaps out there for Shimano A (handle knob designation). Ebay is showing a dearth, especially with SDS Custom shut down in Ukraine. You might consider visiting "Express" website for cost-effective knob options. Hedgehog has a good diagram - if you have an inner plastic bushing (likely on Curado 70), it's easy to upgrade to a 725 ball bearing.

Nasci opened up Were just talking about Nasci on TKF forum, and I had this link already queued.

I don't fish anything lighter than 1 power, even for stream trout niche (includes endemic river bass). I'm more often fishing 2-power for bass finesse from kayak. @NavyToad is correct - call Dobyns and talk to them about how you plan to use the rod. Probably even smarter than sharing it with us. Although, we'd all like to hear your result after talking with Dobyns.

@LakeWinni Line twist is inevitable w/ spinning, whether you loop line off a flat source spool face, or take line off the bottom of a source spool on an axle. I prefer loading spinning line from the bottom of the source spool on an axle. Initial line twist when loading a spinning reel occurs because the diameter of the source spool is different from the diameter of the receiving spool on the reel. Line twist is more destructive (and expensive) with braid than with mono. You solve line twist by always fishing spinning tackle with a swivel - a micro-swivel is plenty good for this. You'll never think about line twist again. I hope this thing is on. My only swivel example happens to be on titanium-wire bite traces for toothy salt fish.

gotta tune you guys to gear-forum protocol - it's not sexy if you don't show the gear

My Abu salt finesse rod w/ Silver Wolf caught everything on the redfish rodeo last fall. v - not my trip fish, but the best photo - v Also MinnowZ on 1/8-oz TexasEye jighead caught everything - these 3 colors, reflected light on left, transmitted light on the right. The first morning on the heavily hit flat, I could tell from the fish sign I was on 200 redfish, and they were moving toward the tide pass and the guide boat that was staked out waiting for them. Normally, the middle color, Mood Ring, is the morning choice because of the mullet sheen and transmitted pink. But it was too visible on the heavily hit flat. When I switched to the bottom, opaque color, The Deal, it was just the right subtle blend color with mullet sheen, and I caught 7 fish on 12 casts. One redfish will make your day. Already told my river bass story from last year too many times, but S-glass ML finesse rod, Smith FO-56 w/ Smith Plugger, and my cheating inline keel spinner for bottom-bouncing on the shallow flagstone. You get to watch big bass slamming their heads into the mudballs wanting to eat it.

I would never let a (20-something in a) shop use a motor on my reel or spool. I use a clamp rod holder, line through the two bottom rod guides, source spool on an axle in a vise, and wind through a phone book with weight for adjustable tension.

Light is big fish sipping tiny winter bait. If they spend too many calories going after the tiny bait, they lose instead of gain calories. This is a regular niche for me, and my favorite annual winter finesse fishing, I have two extreme finesse rods just for it. Almost identical, and the differences reflect the advantages of the two configurations - spinning and casting. Both highly sensitive rods, though long, they weigh 73 and 75 g. Side by side, 500+ catches, there is Zero sensitivity difference. The spinning has the ability to fish sub-gram jigs. I prefer it for complex rigs like tandem jigs and weightless cigar cork dropper. The casting performs better on complex hooks, never fouling the hooks on the line.

I did the math one day. After removing the initial ounce with spool swap, getting 1500CI down from 9 ounces original to 6 ouces final - those last 2 ounces cost $200/oz. @redmeansdistortion all those existing upgrades in your yahoo.jp 2600CI made it a really good buy in a tough-find reel.

@redmeansdistortion Perfect - that's everything you want. Of course, part of the fun with Ambassadeur is making all those upgrades at your bench. Also worth pointing out, your new 2600CI is tough to come by.

It's time to look for a spool to see for yourself what you can do. (Winter is a good time to tinker, but it's no fun until you can get outside to cast) You're not going to kill the reel by making the swap to BFS, because everything you do will change right back to where you started. You're simply adding a capability you didn't have before. A recommendation, get used to the new set-up first casting disposable mono, set your mag brake at the lightest end. When you're backlash proof, install the better line you plan to fish. Exactly what you're doing with BFS spool and microbearing swap is taking a reel made to fish 3/8 oz, and making it fish 3/30 oz just as effectively, and just as reliably. The trick is picking one with a good mag brake. Daiwa SV makes this swap easy (you need the right spool bearing tool - Rorolure sells a good one). Super Duty G is a brain-stumper. It's not supposed to cast 1/8 oz this well, but it does. The reason I ended up with a ZPI Alcance was to chase this further, and there are no aftermarket spools made for Lew's reels. The Alcance - not for the faint of heart - matched with IXA bearings, is the fastest spool I have ever cast, including my racy Daiwas and Abu CT's

It's not like the Actual physics of casting 3.7 g hasn't been covered before on this forum in great detail. The ability to cast 2 g consistently beyond 130' may not be effective, but it is significant. This is effective. Being able to fish both slopes of a tide pass on your cast is twice as effective as only being able to fish the close one. @new2BC4bass Ray's Studio, Roro-X, AMO. The pork difference vs. a stock 1016 spool is evident. AMO and Roro-X fixed-rotor spools will fish 2 g on Zillion. Ray's Studio SV spool will fish 3 g and still allow the brake full SV function to fish 1 ounce. You get the last 10% of your cast distance from your bearings. A BFS Zillion will cast the light weight farther than an Alphas Air because the 34-mm spool doesn't have to turn as fast to get there. The 37-mm spool on an Ambassadeur CT can be set up to out-distance the Zillion. On my '77 Ambassadeur 4500C BFS conversions, I set the internal mag brake casting 3 g. This one casts it past 100' and 100% backlash-proof. The rod is 6'7", rated for 5-g at the low end, but this light-end performance is typical of Japanese rods.

We never show this side of the reels. That 2-hand rod is going to be finesse fishing for snook in 4 weeks...